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STEVE GIBSON - CHAIRMAN OF THE YEAR, EVERY YEAR 16-8-06
Peter Holmes
The disease is slowly creeping through me again, it's pervaded my physche like an insidious hangover. Starting with that customary buzz of nervy, unsure anticipation that brings on the fever. The inane desire to bite my nails, the constant puncturing of my conscious and subconscious thoughts with images of red and white, the shivers down the spine, the edgy worry, the uncontrollable day-dreaming of future and past, the daft superstitious rituals.
Yes, that fever!
The much anticipated commencement of the 15th English Premier League season approaches in earnest for the twenty combatants and, most importantly, my Beloved Boro. Saturday is the day the posturing and blow-farting stops with the big kick-off with a difficult away game at newly-promoted Reading, last season's runaway champions of the Championship and points centurions.
The game is looming on the horizon as a fixture of great significance in the recent histories of both clubs. It's the first time that the blue and white hoops of the regal Royals have graced the lush arenas of the EPL and the first official competitive league game that our own Gareth Southgate will take his seat in the dugout as boss of the Boro.
It will begin a new era and a maybe a defining season that is our ninth straight campaign at the highest level of the English game. Which, in our recent history, within itself is an achievement and a landmark, effectively proving that we are still one of the cream of the crop, metaphorically speaking.
Recently, by gleaning an overall consensus from the mass of knowledgeable opinion on various sites and message boards out there in Boro cyberspace, I'll state that it's generally accepted that this will be a season of consolidation, one effectively of austerity.
Quite simply, expectation is not at the usual stratospheric Champions League or bust level but at a more realistic mid-table level. We the fans are generously making allowances for our present new regime with the consensus being that season 2006-7, will be an immense learning period, a gaining of experience at various levels of our Beloved club. Patience on our part will be a virtue and in that we can all take a leaf out of the book of one of the most patient souls in football.
The one and only Steven Gibson esquire.
After many interesting campaigns as the supremo of the Riverside, he's ridden that knuckle white roller-coaster ride firmly buckled up, side by side, with the rest of us. Grimaced at every defeat and laughed like a maniac at every win, shared it all as passionately as all of us, that whole experience of being a bona-fide, fair dinkum, die-hard Boro wallah.
All because, that's what he is, one of you to the core and he'd be there every bloody week even if he wasn't the Chairman. And every week he's been our glue, our one constant, an immense presence who has held this club together through thick and thin. Full of diplomatic patience, immense loyalty, energy, ideas, understanding, strength and modesty.
Without doubt, he's been an absolute diamond since he reluctantly took up the reins of leadership of our club. Without argument he has been the best Chairman of a football club, not only in this football league but in every football league from England to Emu Plains. If there was an award of such stature from FIFA, the great Gibbo would be duly polishing his baker's dozen win from last season to put on the mantelpiece with the other twelve.
"World Chairman of the Year, yet again, Steven Gibson!" Blatter announces.
THE man who has been the catalyst for a Lazarus revival, from the last gasping breath of a dieing football club in the midst of 1986 to the expectant and fairy tale believing Premier league club we all support and love today. Distil the whole story and it's quite mind-blowingly unbelievable, even by Hollywood on steroids standards.
I was driven to write a fairy tail about it myself on these very pages prior to the UEFA final, 'Once Upon a time in the small town of Middlesbrough.'
The fact that from that era of borrowed boots, kit and home games at Hartlepool United's ground to a stellar comeback to the great stage of Eindhoven in UEFA's cup final is quite frankly the stuff that the comic book hero 'Roy of The Rovers' thrived on in my youth.
Steve Gibson, the self made son of Middlesbrough who borrowed a grand off his old man and created a global transportation business empire called 'Bulkhaul Ltd.' The man who at the tender age of 26 thrust his youthful but wise vigour into the caldron of a Middlesbrough boardroom. A boardroom that, after one appalling decision after another, was haemorrhaging money and was quickly fragmenting around the edges. Can you imagine how strong he must have been to scrap through those dark defining days and still manage to run his business and the Boro?
That joyous and marvellously uplifting photograph of the great man being hoisted to shoulder height on the dais at the Welsh Millennium by the Boro lads, that fateful duck squashing Carling Cup Final win, is a verified smoggy icon, and one of the best ever photographs taken at a sporting venue.
It's immortal history now, which sees Steve as a virtual living martyr to the cause of the Boro. A man who has put his own personal wealth on the line time, and time again, without fuss or fanfare. A true fan, who just happened to evolve into the owner of his passionate past-time, Boro.
Now, contrast this with Chelsea and the instantaneous injection of obscene wealth of their benefactor, rouble billionaire Rollinginit AbramoRich, with all that hoopla accompanied by the sickening sycophantic drivel we constantly get in the media.
It's turned a once working class Chelsea from jellied eels and Watneys into caviar and Dom Perignon. Kings Roaders displaced by Knightsbridge and the result is the club is now vulgar, bloated, inefficient, badly run and populated by money vultures.
"I'm bored with the share market, I think I'll buy a London football club. Vladimar go buy me Chelsea and what shape is the ball in that soccer game again!?"
God help Chelsea when he gets bored with football and pulls his billions out and decides it's time for Formula One, leaving Chelsea in a festering pile of red ink stained blood.
It's massively bad for the game as a whole and I am not the only person who shares that opinion, but we'll ignore the Manchester United and Arsenal fans.
Give me the simple silent evolution and almost shy behind the scenes mortgaging of our great club from Our Steve. I don't hear the Chelski faithful chanting AbramoRich's name unlike the Riverside faithful who regularly chant Gibbo's name.
Now you look at the blueprint that Steve Gibson has put in place at Boro and you can see that his astute and forthright planning all those years ago has resulted in the success of the academy, the fabulous training facilities at Rockliffe and the theatre of smogs at the Riverside. Masterful stuff.
Not one to rule the roost like a megalomaniac he allows people to do their jobs within the framework he designed but controls the ship with firm but subtle inputs. His masterplan from that 1986 D-day has been one of considered and brave evolution, with a few memorable forays into flamboyance, a'la Juninhio, Ravenelli, and Emerson of that breathtaking first four months of the 96-97 season.
He has learned his lessons very quickly from his mistakes and those of others around him remaining loyal and wise, tough but fair. Held in great esteem by other notaries in the game and more importantly is generally recognised as the best chairman in the game by other clubs supporters. Steve Gibson is not only a fan of our great club but in essence a true fan, a shoulder rubbing member of the terrace proletariat who is totally in touch with the heartbeat of this great game.
Not just some bored, asset rich entrepreneur who wants to be seen in his Burberry coat in all his fake tan glory in a front row seat of the director's box. Gibbo goes to the game as a fan, no more no less, for those ninety odd minutes he watches a game he is a committed to our cause as any individual whose arse warms the red plastic of the Riverside.
He's got my total support and I know yours too and will take this club to greater glory.
Long live King Smog.
We are privileged to have him at the helm of the Boro, but I dare say you'd make that statement to him and he'd tell you he's the one who's privileged.
In that fact, we all should be eternally grateful. One of us till the day he pops his clogs.
Raise your glasses folks to Steve Gibson, Chairman of The Year. Every year!
Enough said.
ErimusRed.
TALK ABOUT IT IN THE NEW HOLGATE MESSAGE BOARD
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